My UltraFire 502B has a tail cap reading of 2220 mA at 4.17 volts. At 3.322 Vf, the LED should be getting about 2787 mA but since its only XM-L T6, its OTF is only about 717 lumens. (I hope my calculations are right)
Yes its bright but it gets hot very easilly. Although I added layers of aluminum foil and thermal grease in the space between its drop-in and its head, I still don’t use high for too long.
I think your image with text is great: shows what they are driven at to sell normally and you specified 500lm at 1000mA. Its true it CAN be driven at higher to get more lm, but that doesn’t tend to happen with usual sellers…
Yes people here usually want more power and less efficiency: I’d like this light more too and want to buy a few if it was 3.5A high, 1A med, .5A low or something similar…it allows you to use the highest reasonable power for a few minutes if you want it. But, you are right, the “random general public” probably shouldn’t be offered the light as a standard or they would leave it on and melt things or start fires on accident…
I was only guessing why, maybe its only efficiency in the manufacturers minds, but I think if kids started burning things down with a flashlight we’d have sensational news stories about the “dangerous Li-ion flashlights from China” over here. Could be manufacturers want to avoid this (we probably do too so some idiot politician doesnt use banning Li-ions as a way to show he’s “doing something”).
7135 chips are constant current regulators, and make a constant current driver. convoy-flashlight is referring to a direct-drive (non-constant current) driver that does not regulate current at all.
I see his point about a 12x not fitting on a 17mm board, and to have someone add parts would not be efficient.
convoy-flashlight, if you can find out how much extra it would be to have someone stack the extra chips on your driver, you might find some buyers here on BLF. Many of us regularly add chips to drivers ourselves, but there are a lot of people that want to and cannot (no tools, no soldering experience, “what happens if I get flux on a capacitor?”, etc.).